On January 13 thirty eight MBA students embarked on a two-week module in Shanghai, a unique opportunity to enrich their IESE experience with direct business insights into the Chinese economy. With Shanghai CEIBS Campus as the host for the module, IESE students will participate in courses taught by both IESE and CEIBS faculty -- Managing Global Operations, Business Model Innovation & Entrepreneurial Design, People Management in Asia, and China, Globalization and the World -- and partake in company visits and networking events.
"The Shanghai module is designed to give students both a macro and micro perspective including an economic understanding of emerging markets, the geopolitical situation of the region and some more specific insights into areas such as supply-chain management in China," explains IESE’s Yih-teen Lee, Associate Professor of Managing People in Organizations who teaches in the module.
As Carlos García Pont, IESE Professor of Marketing and the module’s academic director explains, offering students experiences, but also context, is the key objective. Company visits are one important way to fulfill this objective, allowing students to peer into China and get a taste for its business reality. They are an opportunity not only to see how foreign companies like Nokia Siemens Network and Olympus Co., Ltd. operate in the Chinese context, explains Prof. Lee, but also to begin to understand the underlying logic in the functioning of local companies like the Yangshan Deep-Water Port, which has made the Port of Shanghai the busiest container port in the world.
"It is important for students to get a good grasp of what’s driving the economy and how to succeed in China," says former China module participant Joel Brown from Australia. "Inevitably, the businesses we work for will be coming here, if they are not here already."
Optional overseas modules have become extremely popular as a way to gain first-hand experience "on the ground" in other regions of the world and develop a much broader, global mindset. In addition to the China module, students can choose from modules on the New York City Campus, the Sao Paulo ISE Campus, and the Nairobi Strathmore Business School.